Brief Review Christmas til now

For those who read my blog and wonder what I do in Malawi, I assist my parents in a pentecostal Bible School, and orphan feeding program here in Malawi. Our Bible School is a 2 year course, with three 4 week terms a year, in February, June, and October. It is a certificate level course, most of our students lack the necessary prerequisites for anything further. We teach in English and have Chichewa interpretation, all of our course material is in both languages. The bad thing about a two year course is just as you get to really know some of your students and begin to appreciate what God is doing in their lives, it is time for them to graduate.
On the orphan feeding and other assistance, we have over 1800 orphans that we assist in various ways. We help out with school uniforms, and school fees for Secondary School (Primary is free, but not Secondary), housing repair (This is done mostly from August-December when it is dry season, most of the houses are mud bricks with mud mortar, when the roof begins to leak pretty soon a wall will collapse), we also distribute food for part of the year. This time of year is the hardest as the next crop has not yet come in, and the existing harvest dwindles (the harvest will be end of March and beginning of April). We have had many daily requests for assistance, and it can get very overwhelming at times.
We recently fired one of our workers for theft. He was someone that we had known for several years and had helped out in the past. Also at the same time we had another man (former employee and Bible school student) who was staying on our property looking after our water pump, leave in the middle of the night taking the pump, the door from the house (not the security gate, he couldn’t get that off), and almost of the contents in the house he was staying in. Where he was staying is outside of our walled compound and more than 200 meters away so we didn’t hear anything. One other thing that was stolen (human greed is almost farcical, and would be funny if it weren’t so tragic) he took the lock off the outhouse we had made for him. I really fear for him, because he has heard a lot of the truth and yet has done this. We did not renew his work with us a few months ago because he had pilfered a packet or two of the beans that we distribute to orphans. He was caught and apologized, but we didn’t really sense any repentance. He was hired on a year agreement and when it came up we were going to let him go. Around the same time he had a reoccurrence of TB, and had to be hospitalized for two months. When he got out he was too weak to do what he had formerly been doing, so we could not take him back even if we had been minded to. We did however let him continue to stay where he had been staying, rent free, because even though you might have the right to turn someone out, how can you do it, when they are seriously ill like that? I really fear for him, I was worried about him before this happened because I didn’t think he had really repented for his earlier theft and with his being ill, I don’t think he has a lot of time, now he has compounded it. May God grant him repentance!
On another note, Bible school is approaching and things are busy on all fronts. We are hoping that the revealing of these thefts and some other exposing of sin that has recently happened around us will put a real fear of God in this area. May God grant it so!